Here is a slightly lengthy life update (present tense):
I savor my days of soulitude. I get to enjoy the morning again! I’d fallen into the habit of hiding in my room with the window open in the mornings while the house filled with smoke. Most mornings, I wander into the living area, gaze longingly out the window at the snowy mountains in Reserva Nacional Rio Simpson, start to hmm and haw about what I should get into this fine day, check the weather forecast, evaluate whether today is a good day to go into town. When I go into town, it must be very intentional – lock the bike at the Registro Civil (off the main drag, and there is a very strong flagpole), walk to Sodimac Home Center for an adjustable wrench, to Bigger for matches (and a cheese grater? no, I don’t need a cheese grater), finally to the produce wholesaler on Lillo con Simpson for 17 kilos of onions (about $.40/lb?). I load the onions into and onto my pack, and then make for the cabaña.
The water in the shower is hot! I’ve taken maybe four showers in the past month in Coyhaique, about three minutes each, before I start to shake from the bitter cold water. Today I wash my hair, which has been knotting itself into dreads over the past month, and I have no desire to be the dreaded white man. Afterward, I spend an hour pulling apart the knots and end up with a frizzy mop. After this Chile adventure is all said and done, I plan to shave it all off. It’s about time. But will I lose my accumulated knowledge as well? What would Sampson say…
I love the days when I don’t go into town. I used to think I needed activity in my days, but it turns out yoga is enough. I received word today that I’ll be hosting some fellow Fulbrights this weekend – they are very welcome, as I invited them, but still a bit strange, ‘welcome to this remote cabin where I live and work and don’t see anyone for days…’ In addition to the two planned guests, I’m hosting another two unexpected guests this weekend! A fellow Saint Paul native and Colorado transplant is biking from Denver to Punta Arenas with a friend, and found me on Couchsurfing. So we have a full house at the cabin this weekend!
The planned guests arrive Saturday evening and we chat all things Fulbright as I slowly cook a turkey chili that becomes soup… they head to bed and I linger on for a bit, the bikers still haven’t arrived, pouring rain outside…suddenly I see a flash of headlights and moments later two rowdy cyclists are at the door! I sit in amazement as they recall wild tales of their nearly year-long adventure from Denver – they are ‘the Spoken tour,’ look em up! We chat for an hour or two, and I feel a little bad for being rowdy while the other folks are asleep, so I head to bed sometime before midnight. I could have stayed up all night with these folks, listening to stories, waxing philosophical. Brunch is another rowdy affair, with mate, poached eggs, and excellent conversation. By the time we drop the cyclists off in town, I’m feeling kinda funky about my situation – what am I doing sitting around in one place when there’s a giant continent waiting to be explored? I went on a 400-mile solo tour in Florida years back, and never managed to get back on the touring bike, grad school got in the way…
The other Fulbrights and I head toward the Rio Claro valley – supposedly there is a park called Reserva Huemules with a hiking trail. We drive down a winding bumpy road and then speed across a raging stream – I was reminded of the journey of the Fellowship across the river near Rivendell. We open gate after gate with no sign of the park – finally an angry landowner turns us around and points us in the right direction. For some reason, parks in Chile (also Venezuela) are never marked very well, almost like they want to hide them away? Turns out we missed a very tiny CONAF sign and didn’t actually need to ford the stream. The trail is quiet, up and down, never for too long, through damp lenga forests ablaze with fiery flames of fall, lichen clinging to the trunks, moss and crow weed creeping across the forest floor. The landscape bears grim evidence of the early burn in the mid-20th century, giant charred trunks strewn about, the last remains of old growth lenga forest. We reach a stream, I drink and feel very content: I’ve recently become more attuned to natural cycles of joys and disappointments - rain and streams are both harbingers of happiness.
Today the funkiness has already gone – I wake up content, savoring the silence, stillness, and sunshine. A full day of research activities: I’m lucky that I have the opportunity to geek out on water data whenever I want – I think I’d go quite insane if not! A great day to spend at home, watching snow and rain move across the towering cerros outside, rearranging and reconfiguring neural networks. I’m not sure if the contentedness with my work is a form of Stockholm syndrome, or an authentic affinity for problem solving, mental gymnastics. I’m super stoked about the opportunity to spend a week without leaving the cabaña – I’ve got plenty of food to eat, work to do, nowhere I need to be…as much as it would be nice to work alongside other CIEP folks at the office, I would need to get a ride from other researchers and then bike home in the dark on a narrow, winding road -- sounds pretty reckless to me. For a region that supposedly values moving slowly ‘quien se apura en la patagonia pierde el tiempo’, they sure drive fast.
See this post for a detailed description of recent field activities.
Saturday I hitch into town, head over to Buses Suray, buy a ticket for Puerto Aysén, and then head into the fishing shop next door where my former housemate Javier works – I’ve decided to make moves on my fishing ideas, and buy some line and hooks from Javier (thanks for the discount, kind sir!) I’ll wind the line around an empty can of mussels, bait the hook with bits of chicken, and then test the waters of the Rio Simpson, the Rio Claro, and maybe the Rio Blanco near Aysén. Supposedly there is a spawning run the first weekend in May – with all the rain, the rivers are full of sediment so I’m not sure if the fish will be able to see anything; maybe they’ll smell my chicken bits.
Soggy day in Aysén, much more typical than the pure sunshine a few weeks back. The day’s destination (of course, the journey is really the destination) is Puerto Chacabuco, the primary port of the Región de Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo. This small town is mostly industrial, shipping crates, fishing boats, loading docks, cruise terminals. There are almost no waves to be seen, the long and winding fjords damp the intense energy of the mighty Pacific just a few kilometers west. Over the past years, I’ve been feeling a strong affinity for the Pacific – after years in inland high desert Colorado mountains, I’ve longed to see the mountain meet the sea. If given the choice, I will always choose foggy Andes over dry Colorado peaks. My farming fantasies may also need to take place in a rainy region – the Atlantic doesn’t interest me much, Caribbean coasts yes, but the Pacific has a mysterious might of its own, a vast, cold, deep, and lonesome force that commands the continents, rules the land with wild weather, a chaotic peace, cyclical balance, dynamic equilibrium. Aysén could be the place except that I love my friends and family in the states – I can't stomach the idea of establishing my farm far from these folks, but I just don’t know if I’ll ever come around ready to live indefinitely in the Midwest. Why do I want to farm? Hard to explain – I need to play in the compost, feel the dirt between my fingers, get intimate with the systems that sustain life. Last summer, I fell into a trance: greeting the sun with coffee and conversation, working on the computer for a few hours -- thinking about soils, seasons, flow -- yoga, and then riding out the rest of the day’s sunshine in the garden, seeding, weeding, planting, harvesting, landscaping, digging, shoveling, turning, playing. It’s so important that we find ways to be outside, active, happy at home, to see nature everywhere, to find ‘tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything,’ to enjoy the world without needing to hop in a car.
I’m feeling damn good – a real deep sensation that I’m alive, that I’ve mostly moved past ‘survival mode’ and settled into the present moment. I have renewed excitement, interest, inspiration in adventuring – there is so much to see, to experience. Yes rainy cold off-season, but I ain’t no tourist. Perhaps the time is ripe for a grand weeklong adventure in Jeinemeini, maybe a good day trip up to Rio Claro is all I need. I recently met with some folks from the Minga Alegre - I received word that they are planning a water-themed outreach event. Since this is mostly why I’m here, I am super stoked to work with these kindred folk sharing free information about life-giving waters...
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